San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Galveston park opens after redo
GALVESTON — Fourteen years after Hurricane Ike’s devastating storm surge significantly damaged Galveston Island State Park, the beachfront side of the property got a major redo. It reopened last week to the excitement of visitors and residents.
“We just wanted to check it out,” said Royce Winkler, from Temple, who came from a nearby beach house with four of his grandchildren to explore the new facilities last week. “It’s fabulous.”
The much-awaited reopening was a reminder of how long a community’s recovery can take after a hurricane hits — and of how vulnerable the barrier island still is.
Hurricane Ike walloped Galveston Island in 2008. The Category 2 storm pushed in a surge as high as 20 feet on nearby Bolivar Peninsula to the east. Its force wiped out communities, with bodies found in the debris. The park, which is split between a bay and beachside on the west end of Galveston Island, was not spared.
The hurricane left buildings such as the headquarters torn open like a hospital gown, said Tom Linton, a former president of the Friends of Galveston Island State Park, a volunteer group that helps maintain and promote the state park. The damage was so severe that some predicted the park would be closed for up to seven years.
But groups of local volunteers mobilized to help clean up after the storm hit, and the state parks department received some federal and grant funding. Buildings were demolished; other temporary or inadequate facilities remained. Officials managed to reopen much of the area by 2009, while larger-scale renovations were planned.
A vision for the overhaul of the park, which was the basis for the new renovations, was completed in 2011. The designs needed to be reviewed and more funding secured. Construction began in 2019. The beach side of the park remained shut for nearly three years, prolonged because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Workers built 95 new campsites, two new bathrooms and a new park headquarters, according to a news release from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. There are also new changing areas, a spot for horses and shade shelters for day use.
This time around, the facilities are farther back from the ocean to protect them better from flooding, Stephanie Garcia, a spokeswoman for the parks department, wrote in an email. The structures are built to withstand 150-mph winds, electric plugs are 4 feet above the ground, and roads are on average 8 feet above sea level.
“It has been a long time coming, and I could not be more excited for public to once again experience the park at its fullest,” Kody Waters, interim superintendent of Galveston Island State Park, said in a prepared statement.
Galveston’s entire coastline, of course, remains vulnerable to storms such as Ike, and leaders continue to argue over how best to protect it. A version of the so-called Ike Dike plan, envisioned after that storm, includes tall dune systems that would be built on the west end of the island.
It’s being considered in Congress.
Before the renovations began, the Galveston park was one of the most-visited Texas state parks. Between 130,000 and 150,000 people visited the park each year, said Michael Woody, the chief tourism officer for the Galveston Island Park Board of Trustees. While the bay side of the park remained open during construction, officials said they expect the park’s visitor numbers to begin to climb back up.